A British man went on trial on Monday accused of sending miniature bottles of vodka contaminated with caustic soda to public figures as part of a campaign hatched by pro-independence Scottish "terrorists."
Wayne Cook, 45, also threatened to kill English people "with no hesitation or compunction" by poisoning the country's water supply, Manchester Crown Court in northwest England was told.
The unemployed father of three, who was arrested in May last year, denies two charges under the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001 of using "noxious substances or things to cause harm and intimidate."
Prosecutor Paul Taylor told the jury there was enough caustic soda in the bottles to kill if the recipients had drunk the substance.
A package sent to a municipal councilor in northwest England was intercepted by suspicious postal workers, but another to a Scottish journalist got through, he said.
A letter accompanying the package -- signed SNLA (Scottish National Liberation Army) -- explained that "we want to demonstrate our intent to kill English people at random and with no discrimination or compunction."
"This is necessary to convince the British government that we will lethally poison England's water supplies, if they do not withdraw totally from Scotland," it said.
The SNLA "are a terrorist organization. You can gauge their agenda from the letter -- total withdrawal from Scotland by the British government," Taylor said.
"The objective was to be achieved not by democratic means but by threats of mass murder. That's what terrorism is all about," Taylor said.
The court heard that another man who lived at the same block of flats as Cook in Tyldesley, Greater Manchester, pleaded guilty to the same charges at an earlier hearing.
Prosecutors allege the pair hatched the plot together.
In the sweltering streets of Jakarta, buskers carry towering, hollow puppets and pass around a bucket for donations. Now, they fear becoming outlaws. City authorities said they would crack down on use of the sacred ondel-ondel puppets, which can stand as tall as a truck, and they are drafting legislation to remove what they view as a street nuisance. Performances featuring the puppets — originally used by Jakarta’s Betawi people to ward off evil spirits — would be allowed only at set events. The ban could leave many ondel-ondel buskers in Jakarta jobless. “I am confused and anxious. I fear getting raided or even
POLITICAL PATRIARCHS: Recent clashes between Thailand and Cambodia are driven by an escalating feud between rival political families, analysts say The dispute over Thailand and Cambodia’s contested border, which dates back more than a century to disagreements over colonial-era maps, has broken into conflict before. However, the most recent clashes, which erupted on Thursday, have been fueled by another factor: a bitter feud between two powerful political patriarchs. Cambodian Senate President and former prime minister Hun Sen, 72, and former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, 76, were once such close friends that they reportedly called one another brothers. Hun Sen has, over the years, supported Thaksin’s family during their long-running power struggle with Thailand’s military. Thaksin and his sister Yingluck stayed
Kemal Ozdemir looked up at the bare peaks of Mount Cilo in Turkey’s Kurdish majority southeast. “There were glaciers 10 years ago,” he recalled under a cloudless sky. A mountain guide for 15 years, Ozdemir then turned toward the torrent carrying dozens of blocks of ice below a slope covered with grass and rocks — a sign of glacier loss being exacerbated by global warming. “You can see that there are quite a few pieces of glacier in the water right now ... the reason why the waterfalls flow lushly actually shows us how fast the ice is melting,” he said.
Residents across Japan’s Pacific coast yesterday rushed to higher ground as tsunami warnings following a massive earthquake off Russia’s far east resurfaced painful memories and lessons from the devastating 2011 earthquake and nuclear disaster. Television banners flashed “TSUNAMI! EVACUATE!” and similar warnings as most broadcasters cut regular programming to issue warnings and evacuation orders, as tsunami waves approached Japan’s shores. “Do not be glued to the screen. Evacuate now,” a news presenter at public broadcaster NHK shouted. The warnings resurfaced memories of the March 11, 2011, earthquake, when more than 15,000 people died after a magnitude 9 tremor triggered a massive tsunami that
RSS